Cripes, you guys.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Larry Penn: Blue-Collar Troubadour

By Eddie Allen
Photo courtesy of Larry Penn-Cookie Man Music Co.

Extending the pinky finger of his right hand as if holding a
fragile wine glass, Larry Penn dangles a shiny new Gibson guitar by the upper
reaches of its neck. His grip on a snifter
of brandy in the other hand is much firmer.
He lumbers across the floor pausing briefly at the edge of the platform stage
to calculate the effort required to hoist himself. With dexterous aplomb that belies his age and
girth he maneuvers through a crowded tangle of cords and microphone stands. Finding safe harbor for his drink on a window
sill behind the stool at center stage, he then lifts the tree trunk that is his
right leg by going tippy-toe on his left foot. Watching him settle onto the stool is unsettling. Like a jumbo jet touching down, he seems too
big to be graceful.

A long moment of fumbling with the guitar’s strap is
followed by nervous atonal plucking and strumming. He appears to be stalling, an impostor about
to be found out. Right when you think he
is ready to admit that he is, in fact, a bricklayer and not a concert performer
at all, Penn’s meaty hands miraculously discover their calling, loosing an
infectious melody that quickly draws the audience into an invisible grasp that
won’t be released for a long time after the show is over.

The tiny listening room of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin’s
Café Carpe seats, perhaps, sixty people.
On this night before the Thanksgiving holiday it is not full, unusual
for Penn but an occupational hazard even the best in this business deal with
from time to time. While many performers
thrive on glamorous settings and large crowds, Penn requires neither. What this humble venue does afford is a superb
acoustic setting and an intimacy that he masterfully exploits.

He draws a deep and noisy breath that seems to suck all the
air from the room and leans back so far that for a moment he seems in danger of
falling from his perch. A brief tension
holds the crowd until; finally, the gentle giant spews forth. His rusty voice is as burly as the rest of
him and startling at first, like a firecracker going off. It’s too big and hard to be pretty but there
is comfort in its strength—a strength necessitated by the weight of his songs.

They go wild simply wild over me

I never hurt
no one that I can see

But on me
they’ve put a ban

And they
stuck me in the can

They go wild
simply wild over me

“Haywire Mack” McClintock’s, They Go Wild, Simply Wild Over Me is a song that once served to
rouse the passions of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies. “I have sung the song a whole bunch, not only
because it’s a sure crowd pleaser but because I can do it in my sleep,” he
confesses to me later. “That’s important
when you’re nervous on the first song.” But
Penn’s professed performance anxiety is only part of the reason that the old
Wobbly tune is so important to his repertoire.

Woody Guthrie is claimed to have said, “I don’t work. I sing about work.” Penn, a disciple of Guthrie’s, can claim only
the second half of the alleged remark.
He is a working man, a dedicated union man, and a scholar of labor history. More than anything else, Penn’s world view is
framed in the context of working people.
And while his many endeavors reflect a wide variety of interests and
expertise, work and the people who do it is the prevailing theme of his art. “If I can get in with a bunch of working
stiffs then I’m right in my element,” he says.
“The bluer the collar the better.”

Last summer Penn arranged for me to shadow him during a performance
in Chicago. He picked me up at the Milwaukee Amtrak depot
and offered in-depth historical interpretation of architectural sites en route
to the working class neighborhood where he shares a modest, comfortable home
with Pat, his wife and the mother of their five grown children.

The kitchen is small and orderly. A bay window above the sink contains a
working N scale electric train set complete with its own miniature
landscape. There is a 1960s rotary dial
wall mounted telephone. Pat sat with her
back to the refrigerator from which she regularly offered up refreshments. At the opposite end of the table, Penn
tolerated my probing into his life and work as he played his guitar.

Shortly after returning from two hitches in the army,
including service with the American occupational forces in Japan at the
end of World War II, Penn began a thirty-five year stint as a teamster. Describing his initiation into civilian truck
driving he says, “This guy took me out on what was called a student trip. They did this to see if you could drive or
not. At a warehouse with maybe fifty numbered doors
he says to me, ‘Back up to one of them doors.’ My choice of door ten was purely mental; my
arrival at door eight was smooth and in one pass. Then the guy says to me, ‘I can see that you
drove ‘em before.’”

Penn started out with over-the-road moving vans but later
was able to work closer to his native Milwaukee
and a growing family by hauling loads of steel locally and around the state for
thirty-five years. Truck driving is hard
work. He is aggravated by romantic
images of the job put forth by Nashville
songwriters and Hollywood television producers. “They like to pass it off as one of the
glamour professions. Maybe you’d like to
hear a song written by a real live truck driver.” He plays and growls a mournful trucker’s
lament, East Chicago Run. The lyrics conjure up the
smell of the cab of his Model 22 White Mustang in the predawn hours of an all-night
run.

Thirty years of drivin’ I have chiseled on the log

Waiting for the shadows that are hidden in the fog

Thirty years of reekin’ from the oil and the sweat

Thirty years of reaching for another cigarette

Penn embraces the traditions of social and political
activism in folk music and has committed much of his energy and his art to the
cause of organized labor. He bristles at
being pigeon-holed as an “activist singer” but his undying loyalty to the
ideals of unionism and social justice guarantees he’ll be found at any picket
line or labor rally, guitar in hand and booming voice at the ready. Penn once called in a favor from Pete Seeger,
a loyal friend, who joined him at a rally in support of Milwaukee’s Local P-40 in their struggle
against the union-busting corporate bosses of Patrick Cudahy Meat Packers.

Seeger had been raising money for the financially-strapped Sing Out Magazine with a concert tour in
which he was delighting crowds with Penn’s “I’m
A Little Cookie.” In what is
arguably his most recognized and often-covered song, a broken cookie—rejected
and packaged for discount sale by the baking company—is allegory for a child
damaged by Down’s syndrome:

Now I’m not as round as I might be

But I’ll
taste good just wait and see

And I can
love back just twice as hard

As a regular
cookie can.

Honesty is as important to Penn as loyalty. Of the company’s repeated demands for
concessions from workers he responded, “I’d feel better if they took a gun and
said, ‘Stick ‘em up! Your money or your
life.’” In song, Penn articulates the
plight of workers as well as any folksinger ever has, Woody Guthrie included. Penn pays homage to Guthrie—whom he likens to
a patron saint—in his Prayer to Woody,
a kind of open letter bringing the departed Oklahoman up to date:

Sing a dust bowl ballad

In a storm
of foreign cars

while giving a gentle rib to one of Guthrie’s more
recognizable protégés:

Now, some sing for the money,

But the
people need a bard,

The times
they may be changin’

But the
travelin’s just as hard.

Penn’s Frozen in Time is
as haunting as Guthrie’s 1913 Massacre,
the song that it sequels. In it herevisits the brutal deaths of seventy-three children trampled and
smothered in Calumet, Michigan in the chaos that resulted when
company thugs shouted “Fire!” in the stairwell of the Italian Hall. Children of striking miners were having a
Christmas party on the upper floor. The opening
verse alludes to the Christmas moon in Guthrie’s closing verse.

The cold winter moon still rises to find

A trace of
the old Calumet Copper mine

And the
place where the children were waiting inside

For a legend
to freeze them in time

Despite the overall impact of labor—in the personal and
collective sense—on Penn’s body of work, he attributes his musical genesis to
an intrigue with an old recording of Huddie Ledbetter, the legendary bluesman
better known as Leadbelly. With a $17
guitar and an instruction book of chords he was on his way. He started making up silly songs. “You know,” he says, “dirty songs about my
friends—just for laughs.”

Work as a serious folksinger began about the same time he
and Pat became involved in the struggle for civil rights in the l960s. The Penns had befriended Father James Groppi
when he first came to their parish as a curate.
Groppi later got the assignment he wanted in the inner city where, under
his mentorship, a lot of self-destructive kids turned their lives around. Inspired by civil rights efforts he had
experienced while in Selma,
Alabama, Groppi had nurtured the
support of the many who participated in the marches he led from the inner city
in the struggle for open housing. The
Penns were among them.

Ken Germanson edited a monthly newspaper for the Allied
Industrial Workers of America. He also
organized Community 19, an activist group supporting civil rights issues in Milwaukee’s 19th
Ward. Early meetings of the group were
held in the Penns’ living room.
Germanson knew that Penn was doing civil rights songs and he was aware
of their connection with songs from the labor movement. When he arranged for Penn to sing for workers
at the University
of Wisconsin in Madison, Penn’s work
began to evolve.

Germanson eventually wrote the liner notes for Workin’ For A Livin,’ in which he cites
Penn’s appearances at the George Meany Labor Study Center in Maryland, the
Illinois Labor History Society, and before Cesar Chavez and his farm workers as
evidence of that evolution. In a blurb
on that early recording the famed labor balladeer, Joe Glazer, writes of Penn:
“He is one of the very best. I predict
that one of these days he will be as well known as Joe Hill and Woody Guthrie.”

Penn’s fears of being branded as an activist singer may be
well-founded but you need not sit at that kitchen table long to see the limited
accuracy of such labeling. Larry Penn writes
about everything. His songs, stories,
and poems run the gamut of human experience.

Asking people how their parents met is a good way to get
them to tell you a lot about themselves.
Penn responds to the inquiry with eight verses in waltz time in which he
turns the clock back to the days of his mother’s youth. The blossoming lighthouse
keeper’s daughter rowed out onto Lake Michigan
in a small dinghy while her father was asleep.
She aimed to get the attention of a young surfman on duty for the United
States Life Saving Service by feigning distress. Overestimating her boat handling skills and underestimating
the power of the waves, she soon found herself in real peril. Equal to the task, the surfman rescues the
girl. Then he marries her. “The rest is history,” Penn concludes.

In the company of folksingers, stories, songs, and laughter
tend to fill the night and overflow into the wee hours of morning. Without exception a circle is formed; kitchen
tables or campfires are the centerpieces of choice. The circle opens freely to allow another to
enter but also serves as a barrier to distraction from intercourse. This night it holds just the three of
us. The Penns are gracious hosts; they
make you very welcome.

By mid-morning of the next day we have been amply fed and
fussed over by Pat. Penn’s GMC van is
chockablock with guitars, PA equipment, boxes of compact discs and cassette
tapes, and our overnight luggage. His
years of truck driving are evident as he easily wends through the intimidating traffic
that connects Milwaukee
to Chicago
where he will perform under the billing of “The 5th Annual Grand
Hobo Concert.”

Penn’s fascination with industrial folklore stoked an
interest in railroad history which in turn led him to an esoteric milieu of Americana: the hobo. While the popular representation of the hobo
is a slothful fellow inflicted with wanderlust, a more accurate depiction is one
of a large class of migrant laborers who were the driving force behind enormous
industries like mining, lumbering, and the harvesting and canning of fruit and
vegetables. Historical imagery is
seductive to this autodidactic scholar and is the catalyst to a spate of
artistic output that has lifted Penn to the apex of this particular genre. While no shortage of ink has been spilt in
the writing of great songs about trains and hoboes, no one has done it better
than Penn.

He is noticeably irritated by those who would blur the distinctions
between mythological icons, folklore, labor history, and the few remaining
practitioners of the hobo lifestyle.
“There’s a lot of guys out there hoppin’ freights who do it for
recreation. Most of ‘em are carryin’
cell phones and have a credit card in their sock. And I don’t make no bones about it. I don’t approve of it. It’s illegal and it’s dangerous.” Then, just as quickly, his tone softens and he
talks about people he knows who have been riding the rails for decades. “Some of these guys are the genuine article. They’re not a part of an army of itinerant
laborers like you’d’ve seen years ago but they’re makin’ their way the only way
they know how.” The soliloquy is
interrupted long enough to check his blind spot and merge in the dense traffic.
“You’ll know ‘em when you see ‘em,” he
adds.

Our first stop in the WindyCity
is in a seedy post-industrial section of 18th Street. “Come on,” Penn says. “I’ll show you the biggest model train set in
the world.” We turn from the pocked
asphalt into the subterranean parking lot of a building that looks like an
empty warehouse. Seven floors up the elevator
door opens and we cross an empty space to enter a large square room, perhaps 40
by 40 feet and brightly lit by sunlight pouring through floor-to-ceiling
windows. For the moment it takes to
adjust to the light a smell of old paper dominates the senses. We are standing among huge stacks of railroad
memorabilia, posters, handbills, bills of lading, and ilk of documents.

A half dozen fellows are seated in ancient chrome and
leather chairs—apparently salvaged from a doctor’s office waiting room circa
1956—arrayed in front of the huge panes.
They are staring out and down upon a mesmerizing expanse of steel
tracks, behemoth locomotives, and freight and passenger railroad cars. In railroad parlance it’s known as the Amtrak
and Metra’s South Branch Sidestep. You
have to look closely to realize that the narrow brown strip bisecting what a hundred-fifty
years ago might have been called landscape is actually the south branch of the Chicago River. Soft
green patches along its edge are living organisms in what otherwise looks like
a world of steel, glass, and concrete immersed in an atmosphere of diesel
fumes.

Penn is at once recognized by everyone here at what I
eventually learn is the headquarters of the 20th Century Railroad
Club, an organization dedicated to rail fans.
“It’s Cream City Slim,” shouts one as everybody in the room stands to
greet him.

In the hobo culture monikers are given by your peers. CreamCity is itself a nickname
for Milwaukee
derived from the cream color of local bricks used by masons in the construction
of many of the city’s buildings during the 19th Century. “Somebody who can eat with impunity named me
‘Cream City Slim’ because of my Milwaukee
goiter,” Penn admits.

Penn acknowledges them by rattling off names like “Banjo”
Fred, “Texas Madman,” and Luther “The Jet” while aiming his index finger at
each man as if shooting empty bottles off a fencepost. Greetings completed, everyone returns to their
seats and their free-wheeling chatter.
Stories meet with regular interruption by comments on the movements of
the various trains in the busy yard below us.
A great deal of railroad talk consists of acronyms and slang terms that
depict the longer names of railroads and gizmos used in the physical management
of trains. UP, B & O, and IC are
recognizable; beyond that I am lost. It’s
like listening to the play by play of a sporting event that you don’t
understand. Penn knows the game but
spends the better part of the next hour listening.

At the southernmost end of Chicago land lies the gentrified community of
Pullman. Tree-lined boulevards shade the neat two-story
brick row houses and there is a sense of having left Metropolis for Smallville.
The Pullman Historic District comprises an area of several city blocks in what
was once the home of the Pullman Palace Car Company, the model town created by
its industrialist founder, George Pullman. Pullman’s professed vision was to provide his
workers with decent housing and a community where their families could flourish
while they churned out the luxury railroad coaches that would make him incredibly
rich.

Pullman’s
philanthropic tendencies underwent a sharp reversal during the financial panic
of 1893 when he made drastic cuts in his worker’s wages and hours. His refusal to lower rents on houses where those
workers were required to live eventually mushroomed into the first national
labor strike in U. S.
history. Citing the threat to mail
service and siding with the interests of Capital, President Cleveland ordered
federal troops into Chicago
and the peaceful work stoppage turned violent.
Troops fired on the rioting crowd.
Historians can’t agree on the number of citizens who were killed;
accounts vary from a minimum of four to as many as thirty. They do agree that the strike was broken,
people lay dead, labor leaders were jailed, and soon thereafter federal courts
deemed striking an illegal activity. The
rent on George Pullman’s property was never reduced.

It is mid-afternoon when Penn maneuvers the GMC van to the
edge of the immaculately groomed PullmanPark. His carefully cultivated reputation as a
curmudgeon is quickly betrayed by the broad smile that erupts when he
recognizes a couple of young ‘boes. They
are milling on the soft grass among a handful of folks apparently gathering for
the upcoming festivities. Penn seems
unaware of the fact that his arrival, for the second time today, is the focus
of everyone’s attention.

After warm greetings and introductions (no last names) are
exchanged it becomes evident that little in the way of formal organization will
rule the day. No one in this slightly
haggard assemblage looks like a dues-paying member of the Pullman Garden Club,
the event’s sponsoring organization.
Neither does anyone seem to be expecting the arrival of a host or
hostess anytime soon. I have seen a
schedule of events announcing a Hobo Poetry Reading in the park at 3 o’clock. There is no mention of schedules or time of
day in this crowd but somehow a consensus is achieved. Bindles are lifted and we saunter in the
direction of the Hotel Florence about a block away.

This elegant four-story Queen Anne Victorian hotel opened in
1881. Built as a showcase for visitors
to the model town, it was named for Pullman’s
favorite daughter. The aging structure is currently closed for renovation but
there is little evidence of work underway.
Approaching the building is to be drawn back in time. A small marker on the well-kept lawn
commemorates the events of the Pullman Strike and displays a photograph of the
federal troops encamped on this site just days before the killing took place. We are on hallowed ground.

For the next hour I drift in and out of consciousness lulled
by a freshening breeze that seems to rise from the earth itself. This odd assortment of travelers, at first
sprawled pell mell on the cool grass, soon assumes the shape of a circle as
stories and poems are read or recited from memory. Penn is attentive to each rendering, nodding
approval no matter how many times he may have heard it before. When the offering is a creation of the teller
he leans forward. A long strand of gray
hair escapes the confines of his coiffure, dangling freely about a forehead so
furrowed in concentration that his thick eyebrows rise to meet at a right angle
just above the bridge of his wire-rimmed glasses. When struck by the lyric value of a
well-turned phrase he emits an involuntary grunt about three octaves below
middle C.

Not before the last bit of steam escapes from the
storytelling circle do we make our way a short distance south to the stately GreenstoneChurch.
Now home to the United Methodists, this was the only church George Pullman
allowed to be built in the town. Made
from beautiful Serpentine rock quarried in Pennsylvania, the church can accommodate
about 500 worshippers; the town was designed to house 20,000. The original interior woodwork is exquisite cherry
and the stained glass is splendid. But
the most outstanding feature of the church is the 1882 Steere and Turner pipe
organ, an aural Tower
of Babel.

Performers for Sunday’s concert are gathering for a
run-through of the program. To call it a
rehearsal would be a generous use of the term. Luther “The Jet,” one of the gents
from the 20th Century Railroad Club, will be the stage director and
a featured performer. Understandably
enchanted by the fabulous instrument, he insists that all the musicians
transpose their selections to the key of F, enabling his accompaniment. This causes considerable grumbling amongst
the rank and file who are scurrying to find capos for their guitars. Unlike Penn, most are amateur folk musicians
for whom playing in the key of F is akin to speaking Chinese.

It is hot and uncomfortable in the loft of the church where
we gather around the organ’s keyboard and eventually the session drags on until
it is becoming counter-productive. The
day has been long and is only half over.
Approaching his threshold of patience and frustration, Penn resorts to clowning
and cracking wise in an attempt to ease the mounting tension of the
situation. He is quick-witted, funny,
and considerably less reverent than most in this group. When his antics garner an upbraiding from “The
Jet,” Penn slumps in his seat, shamefaced like a schoolboy. “You can’t keep attacking the king without
getting beheaded,” he says when we discuss the episode later.

Pullman’s
Grand Hobo Concert, like many events and festivals Penn gets invited to, is designed
to celebrate the traditions of the hobo or the halcyon days of railroading. Here the players are billed as hobo musicians
but, of course, they are not hoboes. “The Jet” is probably the only one on this
program who has logged ticketless rail miles.
And he has logged plenty. Still,
he is careful to describe himself as a wanderer and freight train rider. Like Penn, he is a scholar and a folklorist
who teaches and entertains.

These events do, however, attract more than just curiosity
seekers and nostalgic lovers of folk music. The hour is late and shadows are long when we
clamber once more from the GMC van near the side entrance of the Lucky Lady
Pub. I am feeling a bit squeamish in
what looks to me like the mean streets of a neighborhood much more jagged than
the Historic Pullman District only blocks to our north; Penn is at home
wherever he goes.

Paul, the proprietor, has prepared a meal and is serving a
growing throng in a small fenced beer garden at the rear of the aging two-story
brownstone building. Many are performers
from the concert and I spot a few of the fellows from the poetry reading. Some in attendance appear to be locals—probably
regular customers of this workingman’s tap room—but there are a few disheveled pilgrims
who are clearly not from the neighborhood.
One cautions me not to approach the shaggy red dog lying next to a small
pile of canvas knapsacks and moth-eaten bedrolls. At two rows of picnic tables several weather-worn
faces hover intently just inches over paper plates from which spaghetti and
meatballs are being slurped with fervor.
Paul emerges from the back door calling for a show of hands from the remaining
unfed then retreats to the darkness of the kitchen. People are helping themselves from two large,
unplugged chest freezers filled with iced beer.
No money is changing hands.

I recall Penn’s words from earlier in the day: “You’ll know
‘em when you see ‘em.”

Within an hour appetites are sated and trash barrels are brimming. Red tomato stains soaked into the disposable
flatware are the only vestige of victuals.
Flies buzz their disappointment over the refuse and then move on to the
greener pastures of distant dumpsters. The
population of empty aluminum cans is growing apace but the ice chests are still
bountiful. It is increasingly clear that
this event won’t be over until the inventory is thoroughly depleted. A can of beer sits untouched in front of Penn
throughout the night. He deflects all
offers of more by lifting the can by his fingertips, swirling it slowly to
demonstrate its fullness and nodding in appreciation of the surrogate generosity.

The chatter of the crowd is eventually silenced by the sound
of “Banjo” Fred strumming on his long-necked instrument, filling the South Chicago night with his booming baritone voice. Soon the music yields to a series of slurred
toasts and the christening of the host, henceforth to be known by the honorary
hobo moniker “Polenta” Paul, in honor of his Italian heritage and his custom of
sharing food.

When Paul requests that some of his “traveling” guests address
the congregation everyone cheers for a fellow they call “Frog,” a scaled-down
version of Charles Bronson. With a
noticeable limp he steps to the fore and suddenly the event takes on the mood
of an AA meeting gone amok.

“They call me Frog. I
started running away from home about the same time I learned to walk. The first time I made it to the end of the
block. When I was six I got halfway
across town. By the time I was twelve I
had made it ninety miles, to Boston
and back on my own. To this day my mother cries because I haven’t
got a roof over my head. I tell her I’ve
got something better. My ceiling is the
stars.”

And one by one they tell their stories. Somebody is slapping me on the back and
spilling beer on my shoes. I don’t get
the name of the one who travels with the red dog: “I lived with an abusive alcoholic mother as
long as I could stand it. One night she
got crazy drunk and chased me out of the house with a butcher knife. I ran until I was exhausted. At the edge of town I came to the railroad
tracks and crawled into a boxcar and fell asleep. When I woke up I was a hundred and fifty
miles away. That was in the early 80s.”

It’s “Texas Madman’s” testimony that is most
intriguing. His mother was a traveling
lady. When she got pregnant some hobo
friends helped her outfit an abandoned boxcar as a home where he spent his
early childhood. “Hoboes would look in
on us regularly with gifts of food and useful items they had scrounged up for
us.” His eyes mist over and the words
come hard. “I was just a kid when she
took sick and died.” His guardian hobo
friends gave him a choice. They would
take him to an orphanage or he could go with them. “I’d heard plenty o’ stories about the
orphanage. It wasn’t a hard
choice.”

It’s after 2:00 am
when Penn and I make our way into the comfort of a modern hotel room. We sleep hard on soft beds.

Back at the GreenstoneChurch by early
afternoon, Penn and a handful of musicians and hoboes are seated around card
tables in the annex of the church.
Ladies in fine hats and beautiful spring dresses, reluctant at first,
steel themselves and venture through the scattered instrument cases and singing
men. You can hear sighs of relief as
they pass into the next room to register for the Pullman Garden Tour.

By 4:00 p.m.
the church is filled to capacity. Luther
“The Jet” unleashes the full power of the pipe organ playing Hallelujah, I’m A Bum as prelude to the
event. It is a very hard act to follow
requiring a revival preacher of untold zeal. The first performers are meek in comparison
and, at best, only amuse the crowd.

When Penn takes the stage he is nervous. The room is growing hot and
uncomfortable. He takes a moment to
compose himself, settling into a catchy guitar riff. Then, loudly enough to rattle the bones of
old George Pullman himself, deep beneath the thick layer of concrete poured
over his casket to protect his carcass from desecration by disgruntled
laborers, Penn thunders the opening line of End
of Train Device, his tongue-in-cheek paean to the vanishing caboose. In railroadspeak, FRED (flashing rear-end
device) is a computer clamped to the last car of a freight train that monitors
air pressure and wheel temperature. It
replaces both the caboose and its human crew.
The lyrics are clever and immediately ingratiating.

Nothing’s colder than an empty jug

Or
the ring down in a coffee mug

It’s
like a heart that don’t return your love

An
end of train device.

His opening song captures the attention of his audience; his
follow-up captures their imagination and leaves them cheering for the heroine
of a real life melodrama. Run Kate Shelley Run chronicles the
courageous deeds of a teenaged Iowa
girl. During a raging storm in the very
wet summer of 1881 she struggled across the railroad bridge over the Des Moines River to warn the crew of the oncoming Chicago
and Northwestern’s Midnight Express that the trestle at upcoming Honey Creek
had broken. Kate knew if the train
arrived before she could get across she would be crushed or she could easily
slip into the raging river as she crawled across the slippery rails. Hundreds of lives were saved. The C&NWBridge
over the Des Moines River now bears her name.

Daddy
was a section hand, run Kate Shelley run

Proud
to be a railroad man, run Kate Shelley run

When
he died the lantern passed to a fifteen year-old lass

She
held the mantle up with class, run Kate Shelley run.

Penn’s performance is far and away the highlight of the Grand
Hobo Concert, for the hoboes and everyone else.
He modestly accepts compliments from many who linger in the audience to
offer their gratitude. At the same time
he deflects the praise onto others.
“Thank you. I thought everyone
did a nice job. Didn’t you?”

It is nearly midnight
when we pull into the alley behind Penn’s Milwaukee
home. When I suggest that the whole trip
has been about forty hours Penn replies, “Yeah, that figures. I get a two-song gig and it’s a whole week’s
work.”

A warm light comes from the kitchen window and a brighter
light comes on at the back door as we dismount once more from the van. Pat is waiting up; the table is set with
sandwiches and fresh fruit. If more than
a half century of driving truck and working as a touring musician strains a
relationship it’s not apparent between this couple. Their eyes meet like young lovers who have
been separated for weeks.

Penn is a natural comic who maintains a steady and hilarious
stream of kidding around with his wife, always good-natured and based on a
strong foundation of mutual respect. Laughter abounds.

“Tell the truth, Larry,” I say, trying to get him to confess
his love out loud. Pat is picking up the
dishes while we sit numbed by exhaustion.
“If Pat was off gallivanting in
the big city and didn’t show up until midnight two days later, would you wait
up for her?” “Sure I would,” he roars
indignantly. “Somebody has to feed me!”

Now, on this November night at the Café Carpe, it’s clear
the spring in his step isn’t wound as tightly as it once was; but as a
performer Penn is at the top of his game and as a writer he is relentlessly
prolific. This fellow who came to music
at an age when most of his peers had already spent twenty years in the business
has established a body of work and garnered accolades that would make any
artist proud.

He debuts Just A Rose,
a love song so wistful that every chest in the room tightens. With the nation on the verge of war in the
Middle East he introduces A Cannon For
Washington Square, his own monument to the fallen inspired by the installation
of a French 75-mm artillery piece in a Racine, Wisconsin, park after World War
I. “This was written about the time guys
were coming back from Vietnam. I am World War II vintage. There were a lot of those vets in coffee
houses then and I needed some way to establish empathy because they get just as
dead in any war.”

No
friends or wives or lovers to weep

And
only the pigeons the vigil do keep

Them
that remember are buried too deep

A
cannon for Washington Square

Everyone applauds in recognition of the opening strains of On My Grandma’s Patchwork Quilt, the
folk music classic inspired by Penn’s immigrant grandmother. In it he likens the design of her crazy-quilt
to a social design in which ethnic diversity is cause for celebration. Then
he segues into Once Upon A Katy R.R. Line,
a musical reminiscence of the history of the Missouri, Kansas, & Texas Railroad, the first
major north-south line known affectionately by railroad men as the “Katy.” The rail buffs—there are some in any of
Penn’s audiences regardless of size—are nodding nostalgic approval of the
lyrics while the uninitiated are rapt by a sense of loss of something they
never knew they had.

All
along the M-K-T from Junction City
down

Nobody
seemed to worry about a lady leavin’ town

And
now the ghost of Jay Gould’s daughter calls across the time

Once
there was a Katy Railroad line.

After the show we share memories of the Chicago trip we had made the previous summer. He brings me up to date on some of the folks
in the cast of characters that were there.
When the subject comes around to work he mentions some upcoming
performances and speaks with enthusiasm about a new recording about to be
released. Some of the songs from
tonight’s show are too new to be on it but he is already making plans for
another studio session. I offer a brief lament about how my own
writing has become bogged down of late.

A few weeks later I receive a package in the mail from Penn
containing his new cd release, A Ride On
The Westbound. A peel-and-stick note
attached to the plastic case carries a one-line poem brimming with the elder’s
wisdom: “Get f----n’ crackin’!” Penn
does not suffer complacency well.

To “catch a ride on the westbound” is the hobo euphemism for
death. The title track is a poignant
tribute to James “Lord Open Road”
Langford, an old hobo who, in 1981, was killed by a couple of young thugs for the
three dollars in his pocket. Penn is a great artist because he sees what
most of us overlook. In the death of Lord Open Road he
sees beyond the obvious tragedy and finds redemption in the story of the hobo’s
friends who travel all the way to the Texas
panhandle to retrieve his remains from a potter’s field. In the hobo tradition of sharing and taking
care of their own, they take him on one last train ride to Britt, Iowa to
scatter his ashes in this little town where hoboes have convened for over a
hundred years.

His
friends have made sure with a ‘bo guarantee

That
Lord Open Road
would be free…

…A
ride on the westbound is easy to catch

Cinders
to cinders and ashes to ash.

You can find Penn performing in any number of coffee houses
and folk festivals around the country. Recently
he has teamed up with a loose-knit group of a half a dozen or so hobo-at-heart
friends and songsmiths who are known collectively as The Rose Tattoo for the
indelibly-inked markings they all wear. Among
them is the legendary U. “Utah”
Phillips. If you’re lucky enough to
catch up with this group you will enjoy a serving of Americana that is becoming increasingly rare.

Larry Penn loves America. He sings about what it can be at its very
best. His curiosity is the source of seemingly
endless artistic energy, the steam that drives one of the finest locomotives in
American folk music today.